One of the things that jumped out at me:

vs 4: The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

vs 5: The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward.

God has given, awakened, opened. I think it is sad and dangerous if we forget where all the good: gifts of wisdom, knowledge & strength of character comes from.

Today, I was reminded of an old note I’ve carefully kept for the past three years.

It’s from my ex-debate president in JC who is sitting in prison right now.

He’s been there for three long years because of his refusal to attend National Service (the story I heard is, he is a pacifist), and this December he’s finally being released. You’ve got to admire his guts: 3 years of prison over 2 years of National Service. I’m really interested to know about his prison experience, I heard he’s having hell.

I was terribly afraid of my debate friends throughout JC, especially my seniors and our undergrad coach. They were some of the most confident, cocky, witty, and intelligent people, and they had the knack of saying things that could never come out of my own mouth. I felt stupid, slow, and most of the time, I was just quiet when I was with them because I felt I couldn’t relate, and I only talked when we were prepping for a case, or doing the dreaded 8-minute machine gun speeches. Sometimes I wonder why I even joined debate.

Debate practice was four hours every Tuesday and Thursday (see, that’s why Singaporean students get so good at what they do, and debate doesn’t even train half as hard as sports. I quit basketball after a week—OK don’t laugh I know I’m deluding myself that I can even play.). My first year was torturous—you don’t compete anymore in your second year, mostly you just train the juniors, sit back and critique them. Every time I had a good excuse to justify being absent, I was relieved and elated. =P Otherwise, my nerves drove me crazy at least twice a week.

I can write fluently, but speaking, and speaking FAST, is a whole different matter. I stuttered and fumbled so much initially, but it was especially terrifying because I trained as the third speaker who is supposed to do rebuttals, which means you have to pick up points on the spot and there is no time whatsoever to write a script, especially for impromptu debates where you get the motion only 20 minutes before the thing. I became good at talking intelligent rubbish. (Now I can’t debate for nuts already. My debate-speak has gone down the drain, all of it, just like my Mandarin. I literally shake when I speak now, no style left whatsoever.)

Anyway, although I suspect my president was just being nice and boosting my morale before a competition, here is what he wrote to me. It meant so, so much:

Jasmine,

I’ve seldom met a debater who’s got such strong views about issues. In fact, you’re the first. I dunno if it’s good for debate, but it is for life. Though I’ve never said it, people on double duties are usually anchors for the team. To date, only you and two others have done it. Your style has improved a great deal, now all I ask is for you to do what you always do.

A.

This is the note I read whenever I feel like a loser with a capital L.  So don’t worry when you feel like a loser, I bet 70% of the time you’re really not.

We’re sitting near the window, and I’m watching an overweight lady with glazed eyes smoke a cigarette after her curry mee as we wait for our koay teow.

He is silently contemplating our surroundings, and lost in my own thoughts, it takes me awhile to realize that we’ve been silent too long, all the way in the jam, and then now. Somehow, I don’t know what to say. His tiredness hangs like a cloud over me. So we talk about the crazy jam, food, the place, and he tells me a businessman friend brought me here before to eat the famous noodle soup when I was still a little girl. I don’t remember.

The years have really just flown by. Today, more than ever, he looks tired. : ( He’s not feeling well.

He looks older than I remember, and I can even see a glimpse of my late grandfather appear behind his still sturdy frame that carries him on 5km jogs three times a week. I’ve not known anyone as disciplined, steady and consistent as my dad.

So I start talking about my job, dealing with crafty people (when I’m so stupid), and about doing people favours (somehow these things are more interesting than college). I become so acutely aware than I have so, so much more to learn to survive in the working world. To not get treated like a doormat. He says I need to ‘figure out what I’m worth’ and don’t let people treat me for less. He says I’m too young and too naive and…sigh, my father is always the half-empty glass. : )

And then I asked him when, when is it OK to oblige and do people favours, and when he will not, and why he did this particular person a favour by doing business with him.

Him: It’s a win-win situation, he just lost his job.

Me: But he’s so rich he doesn’t even need to work for the rest of his life.

And then he said something, something I’m still thinking about. He said you don’t know what a father is made of.

And something just welled up deep within me.

Do I know? Hmm, maybe not. If not for my grandfather’s hard earned money he so wisely and generously left for us for our education, how would I even go to Australia? Do I see the feverishness with which my dad attacks his job? Do I understand the urgency that makes him ‘want’, no, not just want, but NEED to do well, to provide for us as a family? Can I really appreciate all of that, the work of a father and mother shaped by a difficult background?

Do I see the sacrifice, or do I see a jaded individual with his life and energy sapped out of him by his job such that he has no time to really get to know me?

Tomorrow are you free, he asks me. I’m not. I’ve got class the whole day, and then I’ve got to go learn choreography from Nai Lin because she’s only free tomorrow–so I’ll have to skip one lecture, and then I’m going to Pasar Malam with Chrystin, her bro, and Cheryl, because Chrystin is really fun and I’ve not been to one since Form 4.

If you’re free I can bring you to go and eat, he says. I realize that if I listen carefully, I can actually hear him whisper, I want to spend time with you.

Hmm. Do I know what a father is made of.

I have a lot of things to do, more than I expected. When I look at the ‘November’ page in my planner, I just feel like going to sleep. Haha. Dance rehearsals for CYW Penang on 22nd Nov, trip to Singapore and everything to do with the book, people I need and want to meet before they leave & before I leave KL, uni transfer application, moving out (I hope I don’t find dead rats in my room, I already know I’m gonna find cockroaches)…so much that my target for all my last college assignments is just to do a “good enough” job. :) It’s OK, it’s OK if I can’t do it all. I’m talking to myself don’t mind me. Just read the following.

Did you know, it is still as real as ever to me. I need deep, meaningful relationships and I can truly connect in that way with so, so few of my friends.

As Ravi Zacharias put it so eloquently, there are depths to our hungers that the physical does not plumb…there are heights to existential aspirations that our activities cannot attain….and there are breadths of need that the natural cannot span.

But now, I’ve just come to a greater acceptance that it’s alright to be lonely. It’s OK. The sadness and self-pity has waned. Loneliness reminds us that we were created for a more meaningful relationship than can ever be found on earth.

Many of my friends still think journalism is about writing and can’t differentiate between authors and journalists. Some don’t even know what the term means. I can understand that not everyone has good English, but this makes me very sad. 11 years of education and a person doesn’t know what a journalist is.

Recently, we discussed about the relations between PR and Journalism in class, and whether barriers between the two have been broken down. Today, I had my first journalistic experience! I interviewed Ps. Jit Pang from Kluang, Johor, over the phone for some updates about the I Love Kluang project he champions over there. It’ll be posted soon on www.changeyourworldtour.wordpress.com. I feel like a real journalist now because I talked to someone I don’t know and conducted a real conversation with prepared questions and all. : )

Haha but then, I’m not a journalist here, am I. I am affiliated to Change Your World, I am part of it. How do I, and how do my readers deal with the bias in my ‘reporting’?

I’m not really PR either, because I’m not really out to promote I Love Kluang. I’m out to FIND OUT about it. Ask honest questions and write honest updates. No one is paying me. I’m doing this because I believe it is newsworthy. (Or I believe it because I am part of the movement? Hahaha.)

Hmm. Interesting, learning all about the numerous dilemmas modern journalists find themselves in.

I’m havin a headache. Tried to rest for awhile but my mind keeps wandering back to work. I really enjoy being productive so much that sometimes I’ve to force myself to sleep and rest especially with my condition. You know sometimes I promise myself I’ll go to Adelaide and have 1.5 years of LAIDBACK living, smell the roses…I wonder if it will happen? I promised myself the exact same thing when I came to KL. That I’d just do the bare minimum to pass my course. I’m serious.

Doing some research for my Media Contexts essay and just thought I’d share this. You can’t really say it’s idealistic because it’s from someone who’s been through it all:

Carol Marin, the Chicago TV journalist who resigned her job as anchor of WMAQ when the station hired talk show host Jerry Springer as a commentator said that each journalist must define who a journalist is for themselves, but that it is a set of values and principles that make journalism much much more than a job or a business:

“A journalist is somebody who isn’t awed by powerful people, who remembers that the President works for you. . . A journalist is someone who gives the objects of his or her news stories a fair chance; makes a call; asks for a response. . . A journalist knows that the truth never dies, but it leads a tortured life. . . A journalist is someone who steps away from the table and tries to see it all, and puts away his or her views, and tries to look for the truth.”

“A journalist never underestimates the intelligence of the public. People have a lot of busy things in their lives. They have kids, they have shoes to buy, they have places to go, they have work to do. So they don’t, on a daily basis, critique the kinds of reporting that our newspapers or our televisions deliver to them, but it doesn’t mean they don’t notice and it doesn’t mean they don’t care.”

“A journalist is somebody no matter how long they’ve been in the business, who meets a new ethical dilemma every couple of days or weeks. . . A journalist has a sense of humor because it’s the only thing that’s going to save a journalist.”

“A journalist, in my view, forsakes some of the rights of being a citizen for the privilege of being a journalist. That is to say for me, I belong to no organizations. I do no fund raising. I take no stands, I sign no petitions.”

“A journalist has to prepare every day for the possibility of quitting on principle or being fired for the wrong reason.”

“A journalist is someone who loves what they do, and despite the cynicism or the skepticism, never gives up the passion.”

See, that’s why I keep telling people, I don’t even know if I want to be a journalist. When you dream you must ask yourself if you’re willing to do it.

…where I feel:

I’m just so unready for the world. Friends: The advice-giving, proper talk kind of friends, the you-can-see-my-ugliest-side kind of friends, the hang out and be silly kinda friends. Formal relationships: Colleagues that are nice, bosses that are unhappy and you just gotta learn how to “not take it personally” , and irritating little things you just have to grit your teeth and deal with.:)

I feel like the world is so…huge. It’s like I’m an ant looking at a giant marshmallow. Or maybe I’m the glucose molecule figuring out where I fit in the gooey mass of sugar. So many things that I can’t wrap around my mind…

Opium & war…a link Adinda sent me today. Corruption…Tehelka and Operation West End (Mr Justin is really cool when he shows us movie clips/documentaries bout journalists. He told us to watch Nothing But the Truth and I really, really loved it. Every journalism student should watch that movie.)

Why. Why all this. Why are people like that? What makes some people fight so strongly for things they believe in, and how can bad people tell such blatant lies? What kind of person am I gonna grow up to be? Do I just wanna get through life? Do I? Maybe I do? I don’t know? Find a little happiness and…you know, forget the rest. Or am I really serious about living a great destiny. Too few people do that, it’s disappointing.

You know it’s one thing to say you want to do it, it’s another thing to really, really wanna do it. And then it’s a whole new level altogether to sucessfully do it. It takes so much more.

GIMP is absolutely cool. Everyone without Photoshop should download it I’m serious. I finally mustered up the will to ditch my initial Digital Story video idea and I’m beginning on a new one now. Yay. I can forget about food and sleep when I work on all this. Maybe I should switch majors. Switch to Creative Writing. Something more…fluid. Eh? I still can. And my book is almost nearly done with cover page and all! Just one last round of proofreading tomorrow…

was one of my favourite quotes in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (excellently gross movie! But it seems I’m the only one who thinks the food rain and spaghetti typhoon was gross. I felt full after the movie).

Flint Lockwood’s mom truly believed in her crazy son’s dream to become an inventor despite his numerous failures. She didn’t ask him to tune it down, no ‘buts’ and ‘ifs’ and ‘maybe you could…instead’. Just the world needs your originality.

When parents tell their children to dream big, the unspoken lingers in the air, and the young people can fill in the blanks. Some parents secretly want to say, “Dream big but dream practical. Dream our dreams.” But young people with creative aspirations – the budding artists, musicians, writers, actors and dancers of the world – don’t want the practical. They want the improbable. And they need family support.

I found that here while doing some research.

…is an awkward age because you don’t know whether you should still call people Aunty Nancy, or just Nancy. Is Nancy too rude, too familiar? Or will she get slightly offended that Aunty Nancy sounds too old? Haha.

I’ve dropped a lot of titles with people lately.

Well guess what? I took a chance and called Nancy after the crazy assignment yesterday, and she agreed to fetch me all the way from Sunway to watch the Contemporary Dance Showcase at Actors Studio Lot 10! I stayed over with her three girls, Sophia, Serena, and Samantha after that, and it was great watching Project Runway and having Dim Sum for breakfast. Thank you for having me over Nancy & Kevin, and thank you for giving me your top bunk Sophia/Serena/Samantha! You’re the sweetest and girliest girls I know. Samantha holds my hand all the time, kisses me goodnight, and smiles this incredibly sweet smile that can melt a heart of stone.

I’ve actually taken over Doreen’s place to teach a dance class for Community At Heart on Saturday mornings…and that’s where I usually see the three girls. I don’t really feel comfortable teaching it…when Doreen walks in at 12.30pm she tells me all the different things I’m doing wrong and OH NOO sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel. But if there’s one thing about me, it’s this: I don’t avoid situations that I’m afraid of. That’s the best way to learn.

I must say I couldn’t quite appreciate all of the ideas communicated through the dances that night, but that’s a very good sign of Msian choreographers breaking out of the mold. The choreography made me think. Why is she moving like that? And what the heck was THAT? Unfortunately, I felt that the  dancers did not connect enough to the dance…except this one performer named Hii Ing Fung…she mesmerized me! The nuances of her movement and the hint of cheekiness in her facial expression was sublime.

Oh one more thing. Twenty is the perfect age to relate to adults and kids alike on a meaningful level. Nancy can talk to me about what she does, about parenting, about house-hunting; and yet I’m still not too outdated for Taylors Swift and David Archuletta with her 11/12/14 daughters. How cool is that. I want to be twenty forever. Or 21 forever.

Back to my law assignment goodbye.

My ex-discipler back in Singapore, Jasmine Goh, works for this organization called Trybe. They are working with the Ministry of Education this year to welcome the new ASEAN Scholars, and Jas approached me to help answer the following questions. If you’re an ex-ASEAN Scholar, please answer the same questions and email jasmine.goh@trybe.org by 19th October, Monday.

1. What is your name and how old are you now?
Jasmine Yow, 20

2. Which country and city did you come from?
Malaysia, Alor Setar, Kedah.

3. Which school are you studying at and what grade were you at when you were in Singapore?
I studied at National Junior College in JC1 and JC2. I’m now doing Journalism in Malaysia.

4. How long did you stay in Singapore?
2 years

5. How long did you take to adjust to Singapore?

I was always adjusting. Adjusting is a continuous journey.

6. What did you appreciate most about Singapore?
Singapore is full of crazy opportunities: I camped out in a tent in freezing -20 degrees at Outward Bound Korea, learnt scuba diving, tutored a selectively mute girl for a year…whatever you want to pick up, it’s just there for you to grab.

7. Share with us what the toughest things that you had to overcome in Singapore?
The PRESSURE and loneliness. From a big fish in a small pond, I became a big fish in a HUGE ocean and I got lost. But I had so many people to help me through and I’m so grateful to all of them.

8. How was hostel life for you? What did you like and dislike about hostel life?
I miss it! I loved the facilities and living in a community, I disliked having to share a room with 3 other different people (even though they are good friends!) and inconsiderate hostel mates.

9. Were you involved in any CCA? And how did you manage your time between school work and CCA?
I was in Debate. If you like your CCA, somehow you’ll find a way. It’s not that hard.

10. What do you do during your free time?
Wow is there free time? Haha just kidding. Grocery shopping with roommates, reading, swimming, church, movies, playing the piano.

11. Is there any place in Singapore that you will go to if you miss home?
A windy spot at the Hwa Chong Hostel. The wind comforts me.

12. Any words of advise for the international students:
Being an ASEAN Scholar is a tremendous learning opportunity and a privilege. It can also be tiring and challenging and suck the life out of you if you fall into the rat race. For reasons I do not understand until this day, I crumbled under the pressure. But many other scholars did well and made it. People in Singapore will make you think you need to do lots of things to make the grade, to stand out from the pack. They’re not necessarily right. What I think you need to do is grab the chance to find out who you are and discover where your real passions lie.

If you forget everything else I’ve said, just make lots of friends from all over and have fun!